Dealing with Negative Self-Talk (1)

From our free The Pegasus NLP Newsletter

Negative self-talk, or as we call it in NLP, negative internal dialogue is the bane of many people's lives! It's one of the most common issues that people seek help with in our NLP courses: they want to get rid of their negative self-talk, or reduce it, or make it less intrusive, or be in charge of it.

People are looking for ways of dealing with negative self-talk because it features so strongly in negative moods such as anger, anxiety, guilt, and panic - in fact, negative self-talk is often the principle way in which we maintain and exacerbate these moods.

We don't deliberately set out to exacerbate our negative moods in this way. That would be daft. It happens because we don't know how to manage this form of negative thinking and, as a result, believe that we are stuck with it and it's just a reality of life.

Self-talk and anger

Take anger, for example. Let's say that Kate has an disagreement with work colleague Dan in which he insults her and then storms off leaving her feeling hurt and fuming - and without the ability to have her say. Now they no longer speak unless it's absolutely necessary, they deliberately ignore one another, even though they work in the same place and the disagreement occurred weeks ago.

Now Kate is probably having imaginary inner arguments with Dan, saying all of the things she meant to say at the time - over and over again, day and night. These inner arguments or tirades will erode her peace of mind, ability to concentrate and, of course, her sleep.

Anything which reminds her of Dan will restart the inner fuming: she'll typically visualise him, feel a rush of anger, rerun the original disagreement, hear him being insulting, criticise herself for being ineffective in dealing with him, criticise herself for not being able to 'let it go', and on and on. Every time she does this it feeds her anger.

And the inner self-talk and visualising winds her up physically, too, producing a state of neurological and chemical arousal. Her heart rate increases and her muscles become more tense. Which, of course, is likely to add to her inner turmoil since she is likely to also be angry with herself for not being able to control her own moods…

Just 10 or 15 minutes of this kind of inner activity and we can be as emotionally aroused as if we were face-to-face with person. And, when this occurs during the night, it removes any chance of our drifting back into sleep for an hour or two. (And, ironically, while we are experiencing this turmoil the object of our thinking is probably sleeping peacefully and soundly in their own bed!)

Other examples of Negative Self-talk

Anxiety: Jack is worried about a forthcoming meeting with his manager to review Jack's not-so-impressive progress in a work project.

So in the period running up to the meeting he talks to himself about how disastrous it will be if he loses job, visualises all sorts of 'worst-case scenarios' and imagines how awful it will feel, and talks to himself about how he must not let this happen etc etc. Yet his negative self-talk and mental rehearsal make it pretty likely that, in the actual meeting, he will be so tense and anxious that he'll bring about the very thing he is scared of.

Guilt: Patty is a single mother. She has to go out to work in order to make ends meet while looking after her two young children. One of them has begun to misbehave at school and Patty has had an uncomfortable meeting with the head teacher. Now Patty feels guilty for not being the ever present, ever smiling, ever patient mum that she aspires to and constantly criticises herself for not meeting her unrealistic standards.

Learning: Peter is studying for a very important exam. This future career and earning capacity is dependent on the results, as he sees it. Now, learning and registering information so that we can later recall it effortlessly requires a good focus of attention.

But Peter's way of trying to focus his attention for this purpose is to run a constant self-talk patter in which he comments on his poor memory, on the consequences of not doing well, on the time he has wasted enjoying himself instead of studying and so on. His inability to manage his self-talk pretty well guarantees that he will not give a very good account of himself in the exam.

Peace of mind: of the many ways in which reducing self-talk can improve the quality of our lives peace of mind is perhaps the most important. Peace of mind becomes a lot easier when we are able to sit quietly or go for a walk or enjoy a film or concert without having our self-talk chattering on about all the things to be done, or commenting on your performance or ruminating on the past…

10 ways to manage negative self-talk

Self-talk is a normal and important and valuable part of our inner processing, as long as we know how to use or manage it. But because few of us receive lessons in how to use and manage our inner thinking-feeling process, let alone our inner self talk, we end up developing our personal ways of dealing with it through trial and error. And verily are these trial-and-error results even reasonably effective in putting us in the driving seat of our emotional lives.

Because NLP can enable us to "model" or examine how we use our minds and bodies it is valuable insights into how we can better manage our lives. It could be described as driving lessons for the mind-body!

Applying NLP to negative self-talk suggests a number of choices for improving how we use this ability:

	Block it: so that you actually inhibit your own ability to self talk.
	Replace it: similar to blocking, you are here replacing one stream of inner self talk with another
	Inhibit it: by paying attention to things which either do not require self talk or which strongly call upon other senses such as sound, vision or physical sensations
	Re-directionalise it: using your self-talk for more positive purposes
	Negotiate' with it: do a deal with your own self-talk using an NLP technique
	Make it unnecessary: often our self-talk is a means of figuring something out or clearing one's mind. So here we use better ways of achieving this result
	Reduce it: use awareness, plus some of the other methods, to reduce it
	Modulate it: change the manner in which we talk with ourselves so that it has a more supportive and calming effect
	Manage it: develop the ability of deciding to not "entertain" certain trains of thought.
	Own it: as a result of using the other methods the self-talk ceases to be an "it" - we recognise it is simply something we are doing - and which we can do differently.

Use it or be at the mercy of it

When 'used' effectively our self talk is a wonderful facility; a gift which enables us to think creatively, realistically, analytically, thoroughly, critically, etc. Without these abilities we would not be able to function very effectively in everyday life.

The problem with negative self-talk arises from the fact that we do not know that we can manage it or, if we do know this, we don't know how to manage it. It's a bit like having a pet dog. If the dog has been trained it can be a wonderful companion, security assistant, and play mate. If it has always been allowed to do as it wishes it can wreak havoc indoors and outside - and even endanger the safety of friends and family!

Happily the old saying 'you can't teach a old dog new tricks' doesn't apply. Here the analogy falls down. Because it is perfectly possible to learn to manage your self talk.

More to follow

This is the first in a series of Pegasus NLP Newsletter specials which will provide you with some very practical methods for dealing with your self talk so that you can use it at will rather than be at the mercy of it.

To receive our free newsletter subscribe here

© 2000-2008 Reg Connolly - copyrighted, all rights reserved - but you can freely pass this newsletter on to friends as long as you do so in its entirety, include this message and link: http://www.nlp-now.co.uk. Please contact us if you would like to reproduce this article in your own newsletter, literature or web publication.